Emptying the notebook: Washington vs New England
Putting out some smaller notes and clips I had from Washington’s preseason opener against the Patriots
Washington plays its second preseason game tonight. Over the last week, I’ve broken down the play of Jamin Davis, Sam Cosmi, Benjamin St-Juste, Dyami Brown and Sammis Reyes from Washington’s preseason opener. A few days ago, I asked on Twitter who else I should be looking at. There were a few names that came up consistently, so I decided to go back and watch those guys and tweet out a few clips.
In this post, I’m going to basically empty my notebook on those players. I’m going to embed the tweets of the clips I put out and add any other notes I had on the player, but not necessarily do too in depth. I’m just trying this format out, so let me know if you like it or prefer the more detailed breakdowns I typically do.
Bobby McCain
I thought McCain might get some looks with the first team, but Kam Curl and Landon Collins saw all the action there. McCain played free safety with the second team defense and I thought he played well. In Miami, he was almost purely a single-high safety and when he saw the field with the second team unit, that’s where he looked at his best.
Here the Patriots ran a drift concept with the receiver to the left running a clear out route up the seam while the receiver to the right drifts over the middle between the linebackers and the deep safety. This can be hard for the deep safety as they naturally want to stay on top of the go route, but McCain saw the drift route coming in and began to break on it before the ball was thrown. He arrived just after the ball and made a nice tackle to keep the gain to a minimum.
This play later on was a similar concept and again McCain reads it well, gaining his depth but reading the over route and anticipating where the ball was going. He stepped up to match the crossing route, taking it away and forcing the quarterback to check it down.
McCain did a nice job throughout with his reads and processing. He was always quick to identify where the ball was going and get himself in the correct position to defend it.
The end zone angle on this clip shows perfectly what I mean with his reads. You can see McCain with his eyes on the quarterback, reading not only his eyes but his body position. He notices Mac Jones looks to the outside receiver but also never closes his left shoulder off, which tells McCain he’s likely going outside. McCain breaks early towards the sideline, anticipating a go ball, but then notices the receiver breaking off on a curl. The important part though, is as the last line of defense, McCain was ready to help get over the top of a route down the sideline despite starting from the middle of the field.
It’ll be very interesting to see how often McCain plays. I think he’ll have a significant role this year and is the best single high safety Washington has had in quite some time. Curl and Collins both spent some time as the single deep safety with the first team, but they’re both suited to two-deep coverages and playing closer to the line of scrimmage.
Saahdiq Charles
It sounds like Charles is getting work at just about every position along the offensive line bar center. We know he played left guard for Washington last year (though only lasted two snaps before getting hurt) and he’s seen some time at right tackle in training camp while Cornelius Lucas was sidelined at the start of camp. His position in college was left tackle, which is where he played against the Patriots.
The main concern I had with Charles was a couple of times he had this habit of throwing both of his hands to the center of the defender he was trying to block. In theory, it’s not a bad thing to get a hand inside early to try and establish control of the block, but by striking with both hands to the center of the defender, Charles is committing everything to making contact and has no recovery option if he misses. With both hands in the middle, a defender can easily clear both hands with a single swipe and get skinny with their body by going side on. From there, Charles can be easily beat inside or outside. In this case, he gets beat inside.
However, it wasn’t all bad from Charles. He did flash some nice hand work at times too.
In this clip we can see a similar two-handed punch to the chest but the defender doesn’t make him pay. The defender transitions into an attempted long-arm rush, but Charles negates that instantly by chopping down on the elbow with his inside hand. That causes the defender to lose his balance as he was using the arm to lean into Charles, and from there the rep is over.
Another thing I’d like to see from Charles is a little more physicality.
Here Charles does a nice job climbing up to reach a linebacker on the back side of a zone run to the right. However, when he gets there, instead of latching on and driving the linebacker back, he allows the linebacker to step up to him and land a punch to his chest. That pops Charles up and gives the linebacker the chance to disengage and make the tackle.
Charles is in an interesting spot in that he isn’t under any pressure to start this year, but certainly has plenty of talent. Ron Rivera and Washington are fixated on position flexibility and that certainly has its merits, but I do wonder if Charles would benefit from getting the opportunity to settle at one spot and make it his own. It will be interesting to see which spot he plays against the Bengals tonight.
Shaka Toney
The spot for fourth defensive end is completely up for grabs and both seventh-round picks Shaka Toney and William Bradley-King have an equal shot at winning it. I get the feeling Bradley-King might be ahead of Toney because he has a little more size, while Toney is more of a fit as a 3-4 outside linebacker. However, it was Toney that caught my eye more when watching the game back.
The standout thing Toney brings is the ability to challenge the edge with speed. The first play of this clip sees Toney work a punch to the chest into a long-arm that he then drops his hands and transitions into a rip to turn the corner. But the whole time, he was working to get to the edge and turn the corner quickly, forcing the quarterback to step up in the pocket. On the second play, Toney leans more into the pure speed to the edge, again using his inside arm to rip through as the right tackle struggles to keep up.
However, Toney will need to develop more moves than that if he is to consistently threaten as a pass rusher in the NFL. That’s not to say he doesn’t have any other moves to offer, but I only recall seeing him attack the edge with speed and trying to rip through with that inside arm. He has to be cautious about overdoing that or he could struggle.
If he only focuses on speed to the edge and a rip move, Toney could find that he’ll get hooked by the tackle, with his arm around the neck. Ryan Kerrigan used to fall into this constantly and everyone would cry for holding, but it’s not a holding penalty. Pass rushers have to be able to clear that outside hand with some sort of swipe or club to give them a clear path to the edge and avoid getting hooked like that.
Toney also had a few nice plays in the run game.
I liked the way Toney attacked the puller in the first clip, rather than just waiting to get kicked out, he stepped up towards the puller to meet him head on and squeeze the gap inside. Toney stepped inside to hit the inside shoulder of the puller, which enabled him to bounce off the block attempt and be in position to make a tackle. The second play is much simpler, as it's just an example of him setting the edge. But it's something worth highlighting that he is capable of doing that, because that would be the concern of playing Toney at defensive end at his size. Can he hold up on the edge in the run game? That rep showed he is capable.
Dax Milne
It’s been interesting to hear in practice this week that Milne got a run with the second and even first team offense at times. I think we didn’t really get to see what Milne was capable of because Steven Montez had some struggles at quarterback. Montez missed him on a wide open crossing route and his interception came on a curl route to Milne that sailed on him. But despite the poor quarterback play, Milne still ran some nice routes.
This over route is a nice example of how Milne pays attention to small details with his route running. He releases inside initially, but makes sure to work vertically once he reaches the middle of the field. This seemingly allows the defender to catch up, but it forces them to change their path from trying to catch up to a shallow cross, to suddenly having to work vertical. After gaining depth, Milne then breaks his route back across the middle, with the extra change of direction creating good separation from the defender.
I said after the draft Milne could be a nice option to develop as a reliable slot receiver behind Adam Humphries and I still believe that. But it's a crowded room at wide receiver, so the more he can offer the better. If Milne can take his chances as a punt returner in the final two preseason games, that could help him significantly. He had two attempts against the Patriots. One punt sailed out of bounds without him getting a chance to return, but he had a 19 yard return on the other.
Camaron Cheeseman
Any time a long snapper is drafted, they are going to receive far more attention and have much higher expectations on their shoulders than any normal long snapper. With Cheeseman replacing a franchise stalwart in Nick Sundberg, also a fan favorite, the pressure is even higher. So how did he do in his first live action?
These are all his punt snaps from the Patriots game. I’m no snapping expert, so I can’t say exactly how good or bad he was, but I can at least give it an eye test. The first snap looked solid, maybe just slightly low but certainly manageable. The second snap was definitely high and forced punter Tress Way to adjust to secure it before making his punt. The third snap was slightly wide of where Way was standing, causing him to make another adjustment to catch it and then make his punt that ended up a touchback from a distance that Way is typically automatic down inside the 20. The fourth and fifth snaps both looked pretty good to me.
Here are his snaps in the kicking game. The first two are on Dustin Hopkins missed field goal attempts while the third is on his made extra point. The first snap looked pretty solid from that angle. The second appeared to be a little high and wide, not drastically but not ideal either. Way was able to control it and get it placed seemingly in plenty of time. The extra point snap looked pretty much spot on to me, maybe a slight fraction high but certainly nothing to be concerned with.
Rivera said there was an issue with timing between Cheeseman, Way and Hopkins that resulted in the two missed field goals, but also mentioned he’s confident they will get it fixed. It wasn’t the ideal start that you would hope and possibly expect from a long snapper that the team traded up in the sixth round to draft, but it's still early in the preseason and he has plenty of time to sort out the small issues.